Start-Up Kdrama [ Guide]: Korean Insights, Hidden Meanings & Reality Check

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Why “Start-Up” Still Feels So Real In 2025

If you talk to Korean twenty‑somethings about their favorite K‑dramas that capture the feeling of being young, broke, and ambitious, Start-Up almost always comes up. The 2020 tvN drama Start-Up (스타트업), starring Bae Suzy, Nam Joo-hyuk, Kim Seon-ho, and Kang Han-na, is not just “another office romance” for Korean viewers. It is a very specific cultural snapshot of South Korea’s start-up boom, youth unemployment crisis, and obsession with innovation.

From a Korean perspective, Start-Up is loaded with references that global viewers often don’t fully catch: the way parents talk about “stable jobs,” the pressure of spec (스펙) building, the symbolism of Sandbox as a fictional version of Pangyo Techno Valley, even the way characters use honorifics to negotiate hierarchy in a supposedly “flat” start-up culture. When it first aired from October 17 to December 6, 2020, Start-Up wasn’t just trending as a romance drama; it sparked real debates in Korea about start-up realities, coding education, and whether the show glamorized entrepreneurship.

By 2023, the drama had been streamed in over 190 countries via Netflix, and in late 2024 and early 2025, clips from Start-Up resurfaced on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, especially scenes of Kim Seon-ho’s Han Ji-pyeong and the iconic Sandbox elevator pitch moments. Korean media reported a “retro boom” of 2020–2021 dramas during 2024, and Start-Up was frequently mentioned as a comfort rewatch for people now actually working in tech or start-ups.

In this in‑depth guide, I’ll unpack Start-Up as a Korean: the cultural context behind Sandbox, why the Good Boy vs Nam Do-san debate hit so hard domestically, which parts of the start-up life were accurate (and which were pure fantasy), and how this drama shaped global perceptions of Korea’s tech scene. If you loved Start-Up for its romance, you’ll see it differently after understanding what it means inside Korean society.

Key Things To Know About Start-Up Before You Dive Deeper

Start-Up is set in a fictional Korean Silicon Valley
Sandbox, the central incubator in Start-Up, is clearly inspired by Pangyo Techno Valley and Seoul’s start-up hubs in Gangnam and Seongsu. For Koreans, the glass buildings, demo days, and accelerator programs look very familiar.
The drama reflects Korea’s youth unemployment and “spec” culture
Characters constantly worry about resumes, certificates, and “specs.” This mirrors real 20s/30s Koreans who feel trapped between chasing dreams and needing stable jobs.
Han Ji-pyeong embodies the Korean “self-made orphan” narrative
His background as an orphan who becomes a successful VC hits a deep emotional chord in Korea, where education and mentors are seen as life-changing.
The “fake letters” plotline reflects Korean emphasis on written words
Dal-mi’s childhood letters from “Nam Do-san” show how powerful written comfort is in a high-pressure society where people rarely say emotions out loud.
Start-Up popularized hackathons and coding in K-drama form
The hackathon scenes and AI-focused start-up ideas sparked real interest among Korean teens in coding academies and ICT majors.
The love triangle triggered national-scale “second lead syndrome”
The Han Ji-pyeong vs Nam Do-san debate dominated Korean online communities, revealing generational preferences in love, career, and stability.
The OST and quotes became motivational memes
Lines like “Do you have a dream?” and Sandbox’s origin story are still used in Korean presentations, university lectures, and even start-up events.

How Start-Up Emerged From Korea’s Real Tech Boom And Social Pressures

To understand Start-Up properly, you have to see it as a dramatized reflection of South Korea between roughly 2015 and 2020, when start-up fever collided with youth anxiety.

In those years, South Korea’s government heavily promoted innovation and entrepreneurship. According to the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the number of registered start-ups exceeded 1.3 million by 2020, with tech-based ventures growing rapidly. The drama’s Sandbox echoes real initiatives like Seoul Startup Hub and Pangyo Techno Valley. If you compare Sandbox’s glass-walled offices to photos of Pangyo, the resemblance is obvious. You can see the real ecosystem through sites like K-Startup and the government-run Startup Korea portal.

At the same time, youth unemployment was a burning issue. In 2020, the youth unemployment rate (ages 15–29) hovered around 9%, but the “real” unemployment and underemployment felt much higher for young Koreans stuck in exam prep or unstable contract jobs. This background is crucial for understanding why Dal-mi is so desperate to escape her part-time job at a franchise and why her family pushes her toward “safe” career paths.

Start-Up also mirrors the cultural shift from chaebol (conglomerate) worship to start-up admiration. For decades, getting into Samsung, Hyundai, or LG was considered the ultimate success. But by late 2010s, younger Koreans began to romanticize start-up founders like the CEOs behind Coupang, Naver, and Kakao. The drama leverages this cultural moment: Do-san’s journey from failed math genius to start-up CEO is basically the fantasy of moving from “spec monster” to visionary founder.

The series also reflects how Korea adopted and localized Silicon Valley culture. Open-plan offices, hoodie-wearing developers, and English words like “pitch deck,” “demo day,” and “accelerator” appear everywhere. Yet, the hierarchy is still very Korean: age, seniority, and titles matter. For example, even in a supposedly horizontal start-up, characters still use formal speech (존댓말) with older team members and investors. This clash between imported “flat culture” and Korean hierarchy is something local viewers instantly notice.

In the last 30–90 days, Start-Up has been resurfacing on Korean social media again for two main reasons. First, Nam Joo-hyuk’s military discharge and casting news for new projects led fans to revisit his earlier works, with Start-Up clips trending on platforms like Naver TV and YouTube. Second, discussions about AI and tech layoffs in Korea made people rewatch the drama with a more critical eye: Korean commentators on sites like Naver and DC Inside have been debating whether the show’s portrayal of AI start-ups was naïve or prophetic.

On international platforms, Start-Up is still actively recommended by Netflix algorithms, especially in Southeast Asia and Latin America. According to Netflix’s own Korean content campaigns (archived on Netflix’s media site), Start-Up has remained part of curated “inspiring K-drama” lists. Korean tech blogs like Bloter and start-up communities on Brunch also occasionally reference Sandbox as shorthand when discussing incubators or founder culture.

So when you watch Start-Up, you’re not just watching a romance. You’re watching a dramatized, slightly sugar-coated version of a specific Korean era: the moment when “start-up” shifted from a niche business term to a generational dream and, for some, a painful reality.

Inside The World Of Start-Up: Plot, Characters, And Hidden Korean Layers

Start-Up’s surface plot is simple: Seo Dal-mi dreams of becoming Korea’s Steve Jobs, Nam Do-san is a struggling math prodigy turned developer, Han Ji-pyeong is a sharp-tongued VC with a painful past, and Won In-jae (Seo In-jae) is Dal-mi’s estranged sister who chose a chaebol path. They all collide in Sandbox, a start-up incubator that promises to catch people when they fall.

But the drama’s emotional engine is the “fake Nam Do-san” letter plot. As a child, Dal-mi is devastated by her parents’ divorce. Her grandmother asks an orphaned teenager, Ji-pyeong, to write comforting letters to Dal-mi under the name “Nam Do-san,” taken from a random math Olympiad winner in the newspaper. Those letters shape Dal-mi’s entire idea of love and support. Years later, she meets the real Nam Do-san, who gets pulled into the lie for complicated reasons involving business and guilt.

For Korean viewers, this setup resonates because handwritten letters (편지) still hold strong emotional power. Older generations often wrote letters during school days or military service. Having someone secretly write letters on your behalf taps into familiar tropes from Korean melodramas, but Start-Up twists it with the tech world context: the most analog form of comfort (letters) becomes the foundation of a digital-age romance.

The start-up elements are more than just background decoration. Samsan Tech’s projects, from image recognition to AI for the visually impaired, reflect real Korean tech trends. Korea has a strong AI research community, and in the late 2010s, there was a boom in AI-related start-ups, hackathons, and coding bootcamps. The hackathon scenes in Start-Up are dramatized, but the all-nighters, convenience store food, and frantic last-minute debugging are very true to life. Korean developers joked on communities like OKKY that they felt “trauma flashbacks” watching those episodes.

Culturally, the dynamics between characters are deeply Korean. Dal-mi’s grandmother, Choi Won-deok, represents the older generation that didn’t have formal education but possesses “kkotgam” (dried persimmon) wisdom: practical, warm, and slightly shrewd. Her decision to invest her entire savings into Dal-mi and Do-san’s company echoes many real Korean parents who pour retirement funds into their children’s businesses, sometimes with tragic results. The drama romanticizes this, but Koreans know many news stories of failed ventures and family bankruptcies.

Han Ji-pyeong’s relationship with the grandmother is another uniquely Korean emotional core. As an orphan, he finds a pseudo-family through her, and his use of polite speech mixed with familiarity captures the ambiguous status of someone who is “like family” but not legally so. For international viewers, he’s just the charming second lead; for Korean viewers, his every “Halmeoni” (grandma) line carries the weight of Korea’s social welfare gaps and the emotional hunger of kids who grew up in orphanages.

Even Sandbox’s origin story, based on a little girl being saved from the sand by a passerby, is steeped in Korean narrative style. Koreans love origin myths that turn small acts of kindness into large institutions. It reflects the national narrative of post-war rebuilding: from ruins to skyscrapers, from poverty to tech powerhouse, all thanks to sacrifice and “jeong” (emotional bond). Sandbox is basically that myth in start-up form.

Finally, the love triangle is not just fan service. It mirrors two paths young Koreans see in life: Han Ji-pyeong, the hyper-competent, scarred realist who survived the system, and Nam Do-san, the awkward but kind dreamer who is allowed to fail and grow. The national debate over who Dal-mi should choose reveals a lot about what Koreans, especially women, want in an era of economic uncertainty: safety and maturity vs sincerity and shared growth.

What Only Koreans Notice About Start-Up’s World

Watching Start-Up as a Korean, you constantly catch subtle details that most international viewers miss, because they’re rooted in language, social codes, and recent history.

First, the way characters talk about “spec” (스펙) is very specific. In Korea, spec means your full portfolio of qualifications: university, GPA, English test scores, internships, certificates. When Dal-mi worries about lacking spec, it’s not just insecurity; it’s a direct reference to the ruthless hiring filters of Korean companies. Many Korean viewers related to Dal-mi’s fear of being dismissed on paper before anyone sees her actual abilities. Start-Up romanticizes her non-traditional path, but the fear she expresses is very realistic.

Second, the family pressure on Dal-mi and In-jae reflects real generational conflict. Their mother chooses to remarry into wealth, taking In-jae with her, while Dal-mi stays with her father and grandmother. Koreans immediately recognize this as a classic “chaebol vs ordinary family” split. The way the mother later tries to use Dal-mi for social image is uncomfortably familiar for many Koreans who’ve seen parents measure children’s worth by status.

The honorifics and speech levels in Start-Up are also telling. For example, Dal-mi calls Do-san “Nam Do-san-ssi” at first, using the polite suffix “-ssi,” then gradually drops it as they get closer. Ji-pyeong, despite his success, always uses honorifics with the grandmother and even Dal-mi, signaling respect and emotional distance at the same time. These nuances of language mark shifting power dynamics and intimacy levels that Korean viewers track almost subconsciously.

There are also many inside jokes about Korean corporate culture. When characters talk about “gapjil” (갑질), they mean abuse of power by those in a stronger position, something Koreans associate with both chaebol and some toxic start-up CEOs. The antagonist characters who use their authority to humiliate juniors are exaggerated, but their behavior is grounded in real scandals that have hit Korean news, from “nut rage” incidents to workplace bullying cases.

Another detail Koreans notice is how Start-Up portrays failure. In Korean society, failure still carries heavy stigma, especially in careers. While Silicon Valley loves the phrase “fail fast,” in Korea, a failed business can brand you as unreliable for years. Start-Up tries to import the “failure is learning” mindset, but Korean viewers often discussed online how forgiving the drama is. Many commented that in reality, Samsan Tech’s early failures would have made it nearly impossible to secure new investment.

The visual design of Sandbox also triggers recognition. The logos, glass meeting rooms, pitch stages, and even the cafe spaces feel like a mix of real incubators in Pangyo, Mapo, and Gangnam. Koreans who have attended demo days or TIPS program events commented that the drama’s art team did their homework. The convenience store late-night runs, the jjajangmyeon deliveries to the office, the 24-hour PC room vibe when they code – all of this is deeply Korean start-up life, not generic “office” imagery.

Finally, the casting itself carries meaning. Suzy, who plays Dal-mi, is known in Korea as a “nation’s first love” type, but she has also built a strong image as a working woman through dramas like While You Were Sleeping. Nam Joo-hyuk had already played a struggling youth in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo. Kim Seon-ho, before Start-Up, was more of a theater/variety actor; his breakout as Han Ji-pyeong turned him into a symbol of the “good but unlucky guy,” which Koreans jokingly linked to the idea that in reality, competent, emotionally mature men often get overlooked.

So when Koreans watch Start-Up, they’re not just following a plot. They’re reading a layered commentary on education, class, family, language, and workplace culture, wrapped in a shiny tech package.

Start-Up Compared: Where It Stands Among Korean Work And Youth Dramas

Within Korean drama history, Start-Up sits at a crossroads between older office dramas and newer tech-focused series. To understand its impact, it helps to compare it with other works that tackle work life, youth struggles, and entrepreneurship.

Here’s a simplified comparison from a Korean viewer’s angle:

Aspect	Start-Up	Other Representative Dramas
Main setting	Start-up incubator (Sandbox) and small dev office	Traditional corporations (Misaeng), small neighborhood businesses (Itaewon Class), media company (Search: WWW)
Focus	Tech entrepreneurship, youth dreams, love triangle	Office politics, social class, personal revenge, industry-specific issues
Tone	Inspirational, romantic, slightly idealized	Often darker, more realistic, or industry-critical
View of failure	“Fail, learn, try again” Silicon Valley style	“Failure has long-term consequences” Korean style
Love triangle role	Central engine of fandom debates	Sometimes secondary to work plot (Misaeng)
Global reception	Popular on Netflix, strong in SEA, Latin America	Misaeng is more niche but respected; Itaewon Class huge globally
Cultural export	Shapes image of Korea as a start-up/tech hub	Others shape image of Korea as harsh corporate society

Compared to Misaeng (Incomplete Life), which is beloved in Korea for brutally realistic corporate life, Start-Up is noticeably softer. Misaeng shows everyday cruelty: unpaid overtime, abusive bosses, and slow promotions. Start-Up, in contrast, focuses on passion, innovation, and personal growth, even when it touches on betrayal and failure. Many Koreans joked that Start-Up is “what foreign viewers think Korean work life is like after watching too many TED Talks.”

However, that doesn’t mean Start-Up is shallow. Its impact is different. It contributed to a wave of interest in entrepreneurship among younger viewers. After the drama aired, some Korean coding academies and start-up programs reported increased inquiries from teenagers and university students mentioning Start-Up as an inspiration. While it’s hard to quantify exactly, the drama definitely became part of the cultural narrative that “starting something is cool.”

Globally, Start-Up helped position Korea not only as a land of chaebol and K-pop, but also as a place of tech innovators. International fans frequently comment that they had no idea Korea had such a vibrant start-up scene. The show’s visual language – glass offices, pitch competitions, hoodie-wearing developers – aligns with global tech imagery, making it easy for non-Koreans to connect.

In Korean discourse, Start-Up also sparked reflection on what kind of success stories we want to tell. Are we still obsessed with the “genius founder” myth, or do we want more collective, realistic narratives? Some critics on Korean platforms argued that the drama over-romanticized founders and underplayed the contributions of employees and ecosystem support. Others countered that, for once, it was nice to see young Koreans portrayed as creators, not just exam takers.

In short, among Korean work and youth dramas, Start-Up occupies a unique niche: less realistic than Misaeng, less socially radical than Itaewon Class, but more tech-focused and globally resonant than most. Its cultural impact lies not only in what it shows, but in how it made both Koreans and global viewers imagine Korea’s future economy.

Why Start-Up Matters So Much Inside Korean Society

For Koreans, Start-Up is more than a binge-worthy show; it’s a mirror of our current anxieties and hopes. It taps into three big themes that define life for many in their 20s and 30s: unstable work, changing family structures, and the search for meaningful success.

First, the work theme. Korea is one of the most educated countries in the world, yet many graduates struggle to find stable jobs. This has created a generation that feels overqualified but underemployed. Start-Up speaks directly to them: Do-san is a math genius who failed to translate his talent into success; Dal-mi is smart but lacks the “right” credentials; Ji-pyeong is successful but emotionally empty. Each represents a different response to the same system.

Second, family. The drama’s broken family at the core – divorce, remarriage into wealth, siblings separated by class – reflects the shifting Korean family landscape. Divorce rates rose sharply from the late 1990s, and remarriage, while more accepted now, still carries stigma and complications. Many Koreans see parts of their own family histories in Dal-mi and In-jae’s story. The grandmother’s role as emotional anchor also mirrors how grandparents often step in to raise grandchildren when parents are overwhelmed or absent.

Third, the definition of success. Traditionally, success in Korea meant a stable job at a big company, marriage, and owning an apartment. But housing prices in Seoul have skyrocketed, and permanent positions are harder to get. Start-Up presents an alternative: success as building something new, taking risks, and finding purpose. Of course, this is idealized, but it resonates with youth who feel locked out of the old success model anyway.

The drama also sparked gender discussions. Many Korean women debated Dal-mi’s choices: Is she too forgiving of Do-san? Does she sacrifice her own career growth for love? Others saw her as a rare female lead who genuinely pursues business, not just romance. In-jae, who initially chooses a chaebol stepfather’s path, later reclaims her name and independence, offering a contrasting model of female ambition.

Another layer is regional and class identity. Dal-mi’s background as someone who didn’t have elite education but has grit is contrasted with In-jae’s polished, overseas-educated persona. Koreans are very sensitive to these differences: accents, fashion, and even email etiquette signal class and educational background. Start-Up plays with these signals constantly.

Finally, Start-Up’s timing during the COVID-19 pandemic gave it extra weight. It aired when many Koreans were stuck at home, reconsidering their careers and feeling the fragility of “stable” jobs. Watching characters risk everything for their ideas felt both terrifying and liberating. The idea of Sandbox – a place that catches you when you fall – became emotionally symbolic at a time when many felt there was no safety net.

This is why, years later, Koreans still reference Start-Up in conversations about start-up policy, youth entrepreneurship, and even dating. It crystallized a moment when Korea was trying to pivot from an industrial, exam-driven society to a more creative, risk-taking one – and showed how emotionally complicated that pivot really is.

Common Questions Global Viewers Ask About Start-Up

1. Is Sandbox in Start-Up based on a real place in Korea?

Sandbox is fictional, but it’s a composite of real Korean start-up hubs. The most obvious inspiration is Pangyo Techno Valley in Seongnam, often called “Korea’s Silicon Valley.” If you visit Pangyo, you’ll see similar glass buildings, shared workspaces, and cafeterias full of hoodie-wearing developers. Seoul also has spaces like Seoul Startup Hub (in Mapo) and WeWork-style offices in Gangnam and Seongsu that look very much like Sandbox’s interior.

What’s uniquely Korean is the emotional backstory behind Sandbox. The idea that a huge incubator is created because someone once helped a little girl in a sandpit feels melodramatic, but it fits Korean storytelling. We like to attach sentimental origin stories to institutions, emphasizing “jeong” (emotional bond) over pure profit. In reality, government-backed incubators are created through policy decisions and budgets, but Start-Up turns it into a fairy tale about kindness scaling up into infrastructure. So, no, Sandbox isn’t real, but the vibe and ecosystem it depicts are rooted in Korea’s genuine push to nurture tech start-ups.

2. How realistic is Start-Up’s portrayal of Korean start-up life?

From a Korean insider perspective, Start-Up is emotionally truthful in many ways but structurally idealized. The atmosphere of all-nighters, instant ramen, convenience store meals, and coding marathons is extremely accurate. So is the feeling of being judged by investors who barely understand your technology but hold your future in their hands. The anxiety about investment rounds, pivoting ideas, and losing IP to bigger companies also reflects real fears in Korea’s start-up scene.

However, the speed and scale of success are exaggerated. In reality, most Korean start-ups struggle for years before attracting major investment, and many never do. The idea that a young, inexperienced team like Samsan Tech could quickly attract attention from top-tier VCs, win competitions, and negotiate with conglomerates is more fantasy than reality. Also, the legal and financial consequences of failure are softened. In Korea, personal guarantees and debt can haunt failed founders for a long time. Start-Up embraces a more Silicon Valley mindset of “fail fast, try again,” which Koreans aspire to but haven’t fully normalized yet. So it’s a hopeful, glossy version of a much harsher landscape.

3. Why did Han Ji-pyeong become so popular in Korea compared to Nam Do-san?

Han Ji-pyeong’s popularity in Korea – to the point of creating massive “second lead syndrome” – comes from how closely he matches the Korean ideal of a “reliable adult man.” He’s competent, financially stable, emotionally scarred but honest about it, and deeply loyal to the grandmother who helped him. Koreans value “responsibility” and “sincerity” in partners, especially in a society where economic stability is a huge concern. Ji-pyeong checks all those boxes.

Nam Do-san, on the other hand, represents a kinder, more boyish dreamer. He’s pure-hearted and willing to grow, but initially lacks direction and confidence. Global viewers often found him endearing, but many Korean women watching in their late 20s or 30s commented online that, in real life, they’d choose someone like Ji-pyeong because he feels safer in a tough economy. This split sparked intense debates on Korean forums: is love about growing together with a flawed but sincere partner (Do-san), or choosing someone already mature and stable (Ji-pyeong)? The fact that the drama clearly favored Do-san while much of the audience emotionally leaned toward Ji-pyeong created a cultural moment that went far beyond typical second lead fandom.

4. Does Start-Up influence real Korean youth to start businesses?

While it’s hard to measure direct causality, Start-Up definitely contributed to normalizing entrepreneurship among Korean youth. After the drama aired, there were anecdotal reports from coding academies, university entrepreneurship centers, and government start-up programs that more students mentioned Start-Up as a reason they became curious about start-ups or coding. On Korean social media, many teens and college students shared screenshots of Sandbox and wrote captions like “My dream workplace” or “I want to build something like Samsan Tech.”

However, Koreans are also very pragmatic. Most viewers understand that Start-Up is a dramatization. They might feel inspired, but they also see news about failed businesses, founder burnout, and tech layoffs. So instead of causing a reckless start-up rush, the drama more realistically broadened the “mental menu” of options. Before, many parents and students thought in terms of only big corporations, government jobs, or professional exams. After Start-Up, “founder,” “developer,” and “VC” entered mainstream imagination as somewhat more legitimate career paths. It’s less about mass behavior change and more about cultural permission to dream beyond the traditional routes.

5. What cultural nuances in Start-Up do international fans usually miss?

One big nuance is the weight of family expectations. When Dal-mi chooses to stay with her father instead of following her mother into a wealthier remarriage, Koreans immediately read this as a moral stance: choosing emotional loyalty over material comfort. This colors how we interpret every later conflict with her sister In-jae and her mother. International fans sometimes see it just as backstory; Koreans see a deep wound and moral framework.

Another nuance is language. The shifts between formal and informal speech signal changing relationships. For example, when Dal-mi and Do-san switch from “-ssi” to just first names, that’s a clear step in intimacy. Ji-pyeong’s consistent use of polite speech with Dal-mi, even when he’s emotionally vulnerable, shows his internal barrier and respect. The grandmother’s casual speech with everyone, including powerful people, reflects elder privilege in Korean culture: older people can speak comfortably, and it’s not rude.

Also, the obsession with “spec” and “background” is more intense in Korea than many foreigners realize. When characters mention education, overseas experience, or family connections, Korean viewers instantly rank them in an invisible hierarchy. Start-Up plays with this by making Dal-mi the underdog who wins despite lacking elite spec, which feels both satisfying and slightly unrealistic to local viewers. Without understanding this context, some of the emotional payoff might feel exaggerated to global audiences.

6. Is Start-Up still relevant to Korean viewers in 2025?

Yes, and in some ways, even more so. As of 2025, Korea is facing new challenges in its tech sector: AI disruption, global competition, and concerns about overvaluation and burnout. Many young Koreans who watched Start-Up in university are now actually working in tech companies, start-ups, or VC firms. When they rewatch the drama, they see different things: the naivety of certain pitches, the emotional truth of team conflicts, and the unrealistic speed of success.

On Korean social media in late 2024 and early 2025, Start-Up clips resurfaced with captions like “I believed this when I was 22…” or “Reality check after 3 years in a start-up.” People use it as a reference point to talk about what they imagined versus what they actually experienced. At the same time, the core themes – wanting to be seen, fearing failure, longing for a safety net like Sandbox – remain very real. So while some elements now feel dated or overly optimistic, Start-Up has transitioned from a trendy drama to a kind of generational text that Koreans use to reflect on how their dreams have evolved.